Namaste,
Everybody.
So today,
We're going to be talking about something that flies under the radar for so many of us,
And that is childhood emotional neglect.
And today,
I want to break it down for you,
Because once you understand it,
A lot of things are going to click for you.
This is one of the most misunderstood wounds a being can carry,
Because it's not about what happened to you.
It's about what did not happen for you.
So let me explain.
When we think about a painful childhood,
We usually picture something concrete.
We picture something that we can point to.
The yelling,
The chaos,
The addiction,
The verbal words that were used against us,
The way we were spoken to.
But emotional neglect is different.
Emotional neglect is the absence of something that you needed to produce healthy self-esteem,
A healthy sense of self.
It is the parent who never asked you,
For example,
How you felt.
Or the home where feelings went ignored,
They were minimized.
They were treated as an inconvenience.
It's the child who cried alone in their room and nobody came,
Nobody cared.
Nothing terrible that you can point to happened and that is exactly the problem what should have happened the attunement the nurturing the comfort the mirroring the come here i see you i want to help you get through this the sense that your inner world mattered to someone outside of you Someone that was attuning to you,
It never happened.
And here is why this wound is so sneaky and lives below the veil.
Because you cannot remember what never happened.
There is no.
Nothing to point to.
There's no event to point to.
There's no story to tell.
So the adult who grew up emotionally neglected looks back and says,
My childhood was fine.
It wasn't that bad.
I had food.
I had clothes.
My parents worked really hard.
If they're really honest about how they feel,
Something still feels off on the inside.
There's an emptiness that they cannot name.
They feel like a hole in their chest.
There's a sense that they feel different than others or they feel disconnected from people on the outside.
And that is pervasive.
So now let's talk about why so many adult problems trace back to this invisible wound.
And again,
It's flying under the radar.
When you were a child,
You brought your feelings to a parent when you did that,
And this parent could not meet them.
Your brilliant little mind drew a conclusion.
It made a decision.
It decided and perceived,
My feelings don't matter.
And if my feelings don't matter,
Then me,
Who I think I am,
Doesn't matter.
So what happens?
You adapt it.
You learn to disconnect from your emotions,
To stop asking for comfort.
And you ended up handling everything else for yourself.
Now,
Research on this suggests that children who are not emotionally attuned to struggle later in life with identifying their own feelings,
A difficulty that follows them straight to adulthood and in relationships.
And you might be really good at attuning to others,
But you can't attune to you.
And this is where the masking begins,
Because childhood emotional neglect in adults almost never looks like a childhood wound.
It wears disguises.
Now,
Here is the way it shows up.
It looks like the high achiever who cannot rest.
Who keeps chasing the next accomplishment,
Hoping that will finally fill the emptiness inside.
It looks like the people pleaser who knows exactly what everybody else needs and what everybody else wants,
But then goes absolutely blank.
When you ask them what their needs are.
It looks like the partner who shuts down during conflict.
It's not because they don't care.
It's because as a child,
No one ever taught them that emotions can be spoken out loud.
And survived,
And that they could survive disappointing other people.
It looks like the chronic self-sufficient person who says,
I'm fine.
I don't need anything.
I'll handle it myself.
Because needing someone was never safe.
It never worked.
Or it made them feel like a burden as a child.
It looks like feeling numb at your own birthday party.
It looks like you're feeling guilt for when you feel sad,
When nothing is technically wrong.
And it comes down to you secretly believing that everyone else got a manual for life that you never received.
For some reason,
It's just so difficult for you to do that.
Be connected to everything and even yourself.
It looks like the perfectionist,
The person who's suffering from burnout.
It looks like the person who's always lonely inside a relationship.
It looks like not being able to answer questions regarding what you want or how you feel.
And it's important that we don't see these as personal character flaws.
They truly are adaptations.
They're survival strategies of a child that learned that their inner world was invisible.
They were invisible.
So they ended up making their inner world invisible too.
And here's the piece that I really want you to hear.
The emptiness you feel is not proof that something was wrong with you.
It's evidence that something with you was missing.
You missed out on something.
You were a child.
With child needs in a home that could not see them.
Could not tolerate them,
And they were not taken seriously.
So what do you do with this cognitive awareness now?
You begin by doing for yourself what was never done for you,
Dear one.
You start asking yourself the question that people should have asked you when you were a little being.
How do you feel?
What would you like?
And then you pause.
You place your hand on your heart,
And you let the answers come up without judging them.
Now,
Every time you notice a feeling and honor it instead of dismissing it or judging it,
You are reparenting the inner child.
And you are teaching your nervous system a brand new truth.
The truth is my inner world matters.
I matter.
And I have a right to connect with me.
The good news is you're not broken.
You adapted to survive an environment that could not meet you.
And what was learned,
Dear one,
Can be unlearned.
It was never you.
It was only your programming.
And programming can always be rewritten.
Until next time,
I so hope that this has been helpful.
